In the pharmaceutical industry, choosing your suppliers/partners is a critical task, much like choosing your spouse/partner. You must find a partner that you work well with, that you “click” with, and that you can work with for many years to come to ensure the relationship flourishes. When working to select the right partner you must not think about the present but also about the future. Your company’s pipeline and projected growth needs to be taken into account to ensure you are selecting a partner that has the therapeutic experience that matches your pipeline. Moreover, dependent on projected company growth will help determine the number of suppliers needed. For example, it does appear more recently that some companies are moving to one supplier for their CRO. However, typically you want to have at least two suppliers to ensure that changes in workload can be met, diverse experience, and as a safety net in case issues arise with one supplier.
Within the industry, choosing a supplier is often compared to a marriage. You will have the honeymoon phase then eventually you may hit a rocky patch. I truly believe that you should be prepared from the beginning to form a “true” partnership. That means that even if you hit a rough patch in the relationship, a true partner will work together to sustain the relationship. This can help flourish your relationship as you can learn from the mistakes and build a stronger partnership through these experiences.
How Exactly Do You Go About Choosing Your Suppliers?
The typical approach is to complete a Request for Information (RFI), receive proposals from potential suppliers for review, and then compare across the potential suppliers. Past experience always plays a key role in selecting vendors. Right or wrong, we always depend on our past experience with vendors from past companies, etc. Personally, I believe this is an important item as we all bring different experiences to the table. That helps the team have a diverse range of experiences to evaluate. However, the team should always be open as things do change so one may need to give a supplier another chance (if there is a valid rationale to do so).
Personally, I think choosing your suppliers is probably the easiest part of the relationship build. Building and maintaining a relationship can be the challenging part.
How Do You Build a Relationship with Suppliers?
Governance is a vital part of building a relationship. It helps establish commitment from both parties and ensures senior management buys into the relationship. It also ensures transparency and buy-in to the KPIs so both teams understand the KPIs and are accountable for them. It is imperative for the governance to be rolled down to the team that is on the front line for study execution. Typically the governance is built by senior management and not all companies train the team on this document which in turn creates confusion by the team for what they are accountable to achieve in the study.
My company took a very unique approach to the process for building the governance document with our CROs (Early and Late Phase). All CROs were brought to the table (together) to build the document. Everyone weighed in on what KPIs should be included, how to rate the KPIs, etc. This actually worked extremely well! It allowed us to bring many perspectives and some competitiveness to the table. At first, suppliers may have been nervous about the confidentiality of this, but quickly into the meeting the teams realized confidentiality was not an issue. Nowadays with the various consortiums available to the pharmaceutical industry, I believe we are all growing more use to the ideas of sharing information between each other. As well as embracing it as it truly helps us grow which leads to a more successful industry. This in no way means we are sharing confidential information. The team approach to building the governance also allowed all preferred vendors to know who their “competition” was. I believe typically this is always known but perhaps not said out loud. I think this helped show our commitment to our partners that we are willing to be as transparent as possible in our partnership. Transparency (to the degree possible) can strengthen a relationship as well as grow/maintain the relationship. Without transparency into the sponsor’s pipeline (for example), vendors cannot “hold” the “A Team” we all want on our teams. If a sponsor wants to grow a team and keep them within their preferred vendors, then transparency is a must!
How Do You Maintain a Relationship with Suppliers?
This is probably the most challenging part of the relationship as maintaining/growing any relationship takes time, patience, and commitment. If both sides are not willing to invest the time to the relationship then it will not last. This is no different than our personal relationships. You must give the time to the relationship that is needed. Such as regularly scheduled meetings as outlined in your governance, survey completion to learn more about each other and how to improve, lesson learned meetings, team building, etc.
Patience is also crucial! No one is perfect (including the sponsor), so we must not walk away from a relationship when things get tough. As in any relationship, sticking together after conflict/issues arise can bring both parties together. You can grow by learning from those lessons. Commitment is fundamental! If you are not eager to commit to the relationship, then there is no need to bring preferred vendors (partners) on board. The time you put into Governance, Operational Steering Committee Meetings, and Executive Meetings are useless if there is no commitment behind it. Commitment means putting in the hours to work together and build that rapport with your team, learning how each company operates to have a more seamless flowing relationship. A true partnership equals “one team”. While each member of the team must be accountable for their actions, simply always pointing the finger to one another when times get tough will not lead to a true partnership. A partnership entails teamwork to resolve problems.
What is a True Partner?
I talk a lot about a true partner but what does that mean? The definition of partner is “a person who takes part in an undertaking with another or others, especially in a business or company with shared risks and profits”. I believe in adding the word “true” as many times in the industry we state we are partners with our vendors but are we really? We all have experienced situations when things get tough, we start to blame others. How does this show “true partnership”? In order to be a true partner and succeed, I believe you must work together and avoid the “blame game”. Of course you should hold the sponsor team and vendor team accountable for their actions and discover the root cause of any issue that arises but this can be completed in an efficient/professional manner.
Initially, when an issue arises, work as a team to fix the issue and have an acceptable outcome to keep the study moving forward smoothly. Once the problem is resolved, hold a productive lesson learned meeting to learn what happened. How was it solved? How could it have been avoided? Working through these questions in a professional manner once resolved can help you to learn from the issue so it does not occur again. Often times, we learn best from our mistakes.
How Do You Earn Trust?
At many conferences/meetings I attend on Preferred Providers, trust is discussed. How do you earn trust? How can a vendor succeed if no trust is given so they can do their job? I think it can easily be human nature for us to not trust initially. As we need to trust our internal team members, we need to trust our external partners as well. We must remember we choose them as our partners for a reason and must work to build that relationship. Does trusting your teams mean you cannot verify work or work closely with them to achieve your goals - of course not. An excellent quote from Ronald Reagan is “Trust, but verify”. I think that is key in this industry. As the sponsor, we have the overall responsibility for the study/program. We must find that middle ground where you do not micromanage, however, you remain involved. Being involved shows your team you are a team player and here to assist whenever needed, it helps eliminate the “blame game” as you are involved in decisions so all are accountable. I have sat in conferences where people have stated sponsors should not even attend vendor set up meetings such as for IRT build. I was completely puzzled by this. The sponsor in many cases (not all) develops the protocol thus they know the design best, they know what is required by the service provider so why would they not be involved in study builds to ensure the system is built to the specifications needed for a successful study. Taking the time to build the databases as a TEAM will save a tremendous amount of time at the conclusion of study. Otherwise, the study may be close to ending, and the team wonders why a key item wasn’t included in the listings, for example. At that stage it can be very hard or impossible to add if not in database, thus, open communication during study build is essential!
In conclusion, I often find that teams are much more critical of their vendors then their internal team. I think it is important to think of the entire team as one team and work closely together. People tend to work more effectively if they feel part of a team and that they are making a difference.
Carrie Lewis is an Associate Director of Clinical Operations for Lupin Research Inc. She oversees global program management involving multiple therapeutic areas, spanning across respiratory, central nervous system, vaccine therapy, and women’s health. Carrie has 14 years of clinical research experience with sponsor companies, contract research organizations and in academia. She is a specialist in clinical trial operations, outsourcing management, vendor management, and process improvement.